Directory.Move() works in debug mode, but not when deployed

Question

I have a webapp which has read/write/execute access to an aliased directory. When I am in debug mode in Visual Studio, the following statement works:

Directory.Move("\\\\localhost\\Alias\\oldDirectory","\\\\localhost\\Alias\\newDirectory");

The net result is that, oldDirectory is now newDirectory in the aliased directory.

But, when I'm testing this code in pre-production, I have oldDirectory and newDirectory in the aliased directory. Directory.Move is now behaving as if it is only copying oldDirectory to newDirectory.

Why is this happening?

Answer 1

This is most likely a permissions issue.

The user account that is executing this command probably has Create / Write permissions but not Delete permissions in the aliased directory. I would check whether the user account that the program is executing under has Delete / Delete Subfolders and Files permissions.

Edit:

To test this theory, I would temporarily grant the Users group Full Control over the folder to see if the problem goes away.

Answer 2

• Make sure the folder is not under write-protection and no process is accessing any files at the moment you are trying to move the folder.

• Also check whether you gave the security permissions to the correct user, by verifing under which user account the applicationpool is running.

• You might also want to consider developing on a local IIS to prevent such situations in the future (I've been there; not nice)